by Mike Leon
Eisenstein pioneered montage theory when he made Battleship Potemkin in 1925, and practically invented film theory in general. No one has been more influential to moviemaking, except maybe D.W. Griffith, who made a movie about the KKK that Lily has on a DVD she got in a Walmart valuepak for $5. She hasn’t watched it yet.
She looks up from her reading to check the time, and to see if Kimble is watching her. He’s not, and there are still twenty minutes left of this torture. Lily stretches her neck, which aches from looking down at her phone for the last forty minutes. She looks to her right and sees Kayla at the desk next to her, losing the battle to stay awake. On the other side of Kayla is Mike Wilkinson. He’s not that hot, and he doesn’t play sports, but everybody likes him, and he has great parties because his parents are drunks. He smiles and sticks his tongue out at her between two fingers. Lily flips him the bird. He chuckles. Lily smiles.
She turns away from Wilkinson and looks out the window beside her. It’s sunny out and cars pass by on the street in front of the school. Someone stands by the side of the road. He wears a thick leather jacket and sunglasses, his long curly dark hair wrapped in a bandana, and rests his hand on the Harley next to him. His fiery eyes zero in on her as if the walls don’t exist. There is nowhere to hide. He’s here for her. Death is here for her.
She blinks and looks back at the window. He’s gone. He just vanished. She leans closer to search more of the schoolyard. There’s no sign of him. No Harley. No engine roaring away. It’s impossible. She knows she saw him there. She’s not crazy.
Lily gets up from her seat.
“Miss Hoffman?” Kimble says, halting his lecture.
Lily ignores him. She keeps walking.
“Miss Hoffman?” he says again, attempting to wave her down as she walks from the room.
The hallways are empty because class is in session all over the building. Lily hears the kids in her class laughing behind her. She doesn’t care. She closes the Eisenstein book on her iPhone and opens her contacts. The first one says **MOM**. She punches it.
It takes three rings for her mother to pick up, enough time for Lily to make it to the ladies’ room. The bathroom is empty.
“Lily?” her mother says. Her voice is accompanied by the low bass beat of lunchtime at the club.
“I saw him, Mom,” Lily says. She leans to peek under the stall walls. She sees no feet occupying any of them.
“Saw who?” her mother asks, confused. She’s difficult to understand through the music. “What are you talking about?”
“Ted! I saw Ted. He was here watching me.”
“What? Hang on.”
Lily waits for a moment and the bass beat fades, then goes away completely.
“You saw him where?” her mother asks.
“At school, Mom,” Lily says. She leans in the corner, where the stalls meet the sink countertop. “He was standing outside, watching me.”
“Lily,” her mother starts. She pauses for a moment, carefully choosing her next words. “There’s no way. He’s still in prison.”
“I haven’t had a flashback in two years. This was real,” she insists. She’s so sure. “He was there.”
“You remember what Doctor Edgemar said. Take a deep breath. Look at where you are.”
“It wasn’t a fucking flashback!” Lily yells into the phone. She can’t believe her mother is being so condescending. “I saw him!”
“Okay,” her mother says, keeping calm. “What was he doing?”
“He was just standing there, staring at me.” Lily turns and rests her elbows on the countertop. She blinks down into the empty sink in front of her.
“Just standing there?”
“Yeah.” Lily closes her eyes and takes a deep breath like her doctor always tells her to do.
“And then what?”
“And then he disappeared.”
“Where did he go?”
“I—I don’t know.” The visual of Ted vanishing into thin air like a ninja suddenly makes the whole thing seem so much more insane.
“And he could see you? In that whole school building, he somehow knew right which class you were sitting in?”
“I guess . . . it sounds kinda crazy.”
“Lily, he’s in prison. He’s two thousand miles away. We changed our names. There’s no way he found us.”
“Yeah,” Lily admits. She was practically falling asleep in that class anyway. She might have dreamt the whole thing. “You’re right.”
“I’ll be home early tonight. Why don’t we watch some movies and just be lazy?”
“Okay, Mom. That sounds like a plan.”
Lily hears someone coming as she hangs up the phone.
The girl who walks in is taller than her by half a head, with shiny golden hair and earth-tone lip gloss matching her tan complexion. Her pink top is cut short to expose her perfect washboard abs and her skinny jeans cost more than Lily makes in two weeks at the video store. The girl fiddles with the silver purity ring that is her signature—and that of anyone who wants to hang out with her. It’s Jenny Brunswick. Lily can’t stand her.
“I heard you’re going to prom with Chris Krohike,” Jenny says. She smirks slyly. “Hot.”
“That’s not true,” Lily says. Krohike must be blabbing to people about sleeping with her. She’s gonna smack that little nerd when she sees him. “We’re just friends. That’s all.”
“Too bad. You guys would make a cute couple.” Jenny snickers. “And it’s not like anybody else is gonna ask you.”
“What?”
“Well, Marilyn Manson doesn’t go here,” Jenny says. She cocks her head to the side and smiles. “And I don’t think they allow lesbos at the dance. Even lipstick lesbos.”
Lily can’t believe that bitch is starting this right now. Right away, she wants to tell Jenny she fucked her boyfriend. That would feel real good, but she doesn’t want to make a mess for Chad. She likes Chad. She settles for saying something lame.
“Who writes your insults?” Lily says. “Your grandpa?”
“Who did you blow to get those shoes?” Jenny fires back. “The garbage man?”
Lily looks down at her stiletto boots. You don’t dis the boots . . .
“Jenny, your roots are showing,” Lily says, pointing up to Jenny’s hair. “The ones in your hair and the ones from the trailer park.”
“Please.” Jenny waves her hand dismissively. “You look like a mangy raccoon some hick tried to pass off as a chupacabra carcass.” She circles her eyes with her fingers.
Lily steps closer and gets serious.
“You look like something a flea market shopper sharted onto one of those motorized carts through their sweatpants,” she says, glaring up at Jenny.
“You look like what my dog grinds into the carpet when he has worms,” Jenny says, breathing down at Lily. The bitch is a lot taller than her.
“You look like the after picture from one of those ‘three months on meth’ P.S.A.s,” Lily says. The stench of Taylor Swift’s Wonderstruck fragrance is almost too much for her to deal with this close.
“You look like the before picture from an Accutane commercial,” Jenny says.
“You look like something Sarah McLachlan would sing about. You’re an abused animal that nobody wants.”
“There’s a Cards Against Humanity card with just your face on it.” Jenny leans in so she’s talking right into Lily’s nose. “That’s all that’s on it. Your face.”
“You look like Yolandi Visser,” Lily says, realizing too late that Jenny has probably never heard of the South African popstar, who looks like a bleached blond and emaciated Cro-Magnon.
“Who?” Jenny scrunches her face in confusion.
“If you knew, you’d be really offended.”
“I’m offended by you, sucking every dick in the school.”
“At least I’m not a freezer.” Lily has finally had enough of this. She doesn’t know why she stood here for so long.
“If you give the mil
k away to everybody,” Jenny says, stretching out the last word for emphasis, “then who’s gonna buy the cow? Cow.”
Lily pushes past Jenny and out into the hall as the bell rings.
“Moo,” Jenny lows at her from the bathroom door. Lily looks back at her angrily as she walks down the hall. Jenny moos one more time.
INT. VIDEO TIME – DAY
The horror aisle at Video Time is well-stocked with B-rate gems of the eighties shock video golden age. It’s what attracted Lily to this place from the start.
“So are you, from around here?” she asks her new coworker as she replaces a plain white cassette case labeled Faces of Death behind its Styrofoam filled and skull adorned box. “I’ve never seen you around.”
“I grew up in a commune,” Jeremy says, eyeing the video cover curiously.
“Oh, like a hippie cult thing?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Sort of.”
“That’s interesting,” Lily says. She doesn’t really think it’s interesting. It’s messed up, but she likes messed up. She wore the skinniest skinny jeans she has, very low-rise with leather stiletto knee boots and a stretched out black Army of Darkness T-shirt that leaves her left shoulder bare. She’s trying to get his attention without going quite all in. Nothing is more disappointing than a man who needs a walkthrough.
“It wasn’t for me,” he says. “I bailed. Figured I wanted to be more like normal people.”
“I hear you,” Lily says. She makes a point to tug at her leopard-print bra strap only inches away from his chin. This close to him, she catches a whiff of something familiar. He has a smell she recognizes. It isn’t clean, like aftershave or cologne. It’s not musk. It’s not a boy smell. It’s something else—something salty?
He ignores her. He grabs a handful of tapes from the cart and begins shelving them himself. That’s a strike, she thinks.
“What about you?” he asks. “Are you from around here?”
“Not really.” It’s a half truth. She wasn’t born here, but she’s been here for a long time—all of this life, anyway. “My mom bought one of the clubs by the base and we moved here.”
“A strip club?” Jeremy asks. There’s a tinge of something in his voice. Surprise? Disapproval? She isn’t sure.
“Yeah. Why? You got a problem with that?”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. She isn’t sure whether to believe him. Maybe that weirdo commune made him super religious or something.
“Good,” she says. “I want to dance, but I’m not eighteen yet. The money is fantastic.”
“Are you promiscuous?”
“The hell is that supposed to mean?” She raises an eyebrow. She thinks he’s trying to be sly about getting what he wants. She can play this game.
“Nothing.” His answer is cold and robotic. He continues shelving returned tapes.
The next tape Lily picks up is Paul Haggis’s 2004 simpering glurgefest Crash, a movie so hammy it would make Nicholas Sparks retch. She makes a point to switch the tape with the 1996 Cronenberg movie of the same name—a film which features James Spader fucking an open wound on Rosanna Arquette’s leg. She likes to do this when Amy isn’t around, in hopes that she’ll expose some church lady lame-o to a real masterpiece instead of the trash they thought they were getting.
“Why don’t you want to do this anymore?” he asks.
“You mean like what do I really want to do?”
“Yes. What do you really want to do?”
Lily stops, uncertain whether to say. She always struggles with this, because she thinks it makes her sound like a stupid little girl.
“I want to be in movies,” she says. “I know it’s stupid, but that’s what I want to do.”
“Why is it stupid?”
She smiles at him, but she doesn’t say anything in reply. Unless he’s a blithering idiot, he’s just being patronizing. She’s fine with leaving it at that.
When they’ve finished putting back all the videos, Lily teaches him how to use the cash register. The point-of-sale system at Video Time is an ancient thing, older than dirt and half as useful. But then that seems to be the case with point-of-sale systems everywhere Lily goes.
“I’m pretty sure this shit computer is older than I am,” Lily says. She smashes the cash drawer closed after her second demonstration of how to ring up a sale. The black screen displays a lime green box made up entirely of ASCII characters surrounding the words ###SALE COMPLETE###. “Now you try.”
Lily sets a twenty-ounce bottle of refreshing Pepsi® on the counter. He gets it right in exactly one attempt. Press F2 to start the sale. Press F4 to pick a customer from the list of store members or F3 to enter a new one. F5 starts a generic sale for candy and snacks. Scan the tapes to add them to the invoice. Push F8 to continue. Arrow keys select the payment type. Push Enter. The computer asks Are You Sure? Everyone always gets stuck there because it doesn’t say what to push, and the usual Y or N keys do nothing. F8 continues and prints a receipt. He gets it, though. Even all the stupid F keys. He does it just as fast as she does.
“I thought you would have more questions,” Lily says. She pauses, unsure how to continue. “Do you have more questions?”
He shakes his head. Expressionless. Unblinking. He has the kind of coldness that belies either intense rage or total apathy. Lily can’t decide which it is quite yet.
“Okay then.” Lily frowns quizzically. “The last thing we need to go over is what to do if somebody robs the store.”
“I won’t give them anything,” he says, shrugging absently. He doesn’t say it with the sort of tough guy bravado she would expect from a cocky boy her own age.
“No,” she corrects. “I mean, you’re supposed to give them everything. Not like it matters. We have like six dollars in the register on our best day. Nobody comes in here.”
“Why not?”
“Dude, this place is a front. You realize that, right? Marty, the owner, just uses it to launder money from whatever it is that he does. He’s kind of old and I don’t think he realizes how obvious it looks. You don’t think people actually rent videos when there’s Netflix and Amazon? Tapes and DVDs are done. Blu-ray was hardly ever a thing.”
“What’s Blu-ray?”
“Yeah. Exactly.” Lily rolls her eyes. It’s a lame joke, but she laughs anyway. After a second, she realizes he isn’t laughing with her.
“Wait. Seriously?” she says.
“Huh? Oh, no. I know what Blu-ray is,” he says.
“That’s good. You seem so intense all the time. I can’t tell when you’re joking.”
“Yeah,” is his only response. He continues to stare back at her with quiet severity.
“Intense.” Lily can’t deal with him looking at her like that for very long. It’s hot, but it’s also kind of creepy, like he can see through her down to the soul. “I bet your girlfriend likes that.”
He shakes his head.
“I’ve never had a girlfriend,” he says.
INT. LILY’S HOUSE – NIGHT
Lily turns the corner on to her street and sees the reflective lettering of a police car glowing in her headlights. That’s unusual. The second car is a cause for fear. It’s parked in her driveway.
Lily brings her purple Chevrolet Malibu to a hard stop in front of her house, cutting the engine. She leaves the movies she brought home sitting on the passenger seat as she jumps out. She stomps through the grass to her front door.
“Mom?”
The front door hangs open and the lights are on inside. As she nears the door, she gasps, putting her hand to her mouth. There is a bloody dead thing on the front porch across the welcome mat, so coated in slick red muck she can’t tell what it was before—she thinks it might have been part of a horse or a dog. Above the carcass, the front door is smeared with drying blood. It spells out one word, all in caps except for the H.
WhORE
“Mom!” Lily screams.
A suited man she does not know appears framed in the lighted d
oorway. Tall. Gangly.
“Who are you?” she says, backing away. “Where’s my mom?”
“Your mom is fine,” says the man in the doorway. “She’s down the hall.”
Another man leans around the corner of the door, this one wearing a police cap and black and whites. She steps forward.
“The back door is open if you don’t want to step over the, uh . . .” the uniform cop points at the thing on the doorstep.
Lily climbs the front steps to the porch, keeping her eyes on the door as she steps over the carcass. She doesn’t want to look at it.
She clomps down the hallway toward the kitchen, her boots like bass drums on the wood floor. The house is bigger than most, with an open floor plan and sprawling rooms. The decor everywhere besides Lily’s room is mundane: some cookie jars shaped like fat cats, a rainbow-colored painting over the kitchen table, a framed picture of the Beatles on Abbey Road, generally a lot of stuff that Lily’s mom got at Target.
“Mom?” she says.
“In here,” her mother says.
Lily sets foot into the kitchen and finds her mother at the table in front of a bottle of vodka with a glass in hand. Jeanette Hoffman is a tall woman with blond streaks in her long auburn hair. She’s still wearing her work clothes—shredded jeans and a tube top. A detective wearing a cornflower blue tie sits at the table, not across, but next to her.
“Lily,” her mother says. “I want you to meet Detective Burnett.”
“You already met Detective Lowrey,” says cornflower tie. He motions down the hall toward the guys at the front door.
“Yeah,” Lily says. She scrunches her face at her mother, wondering if she’s drunk. “What happened?”
“Your mother came home this evening and found some remains,” Burnett says. His tone is bland. He smirks. He’s going for the soft sell.
“I feel so silly about it now.” Jeanette laughs.
“She called us,” Burnett says. He’s dismissing the whole thing already, Lily can tell. “Turns out it was just a cow head. We think it’s from a butcher shop. Probably some neighborhood kids.”
